After last night’s Memphis loss to the Clippers, I asked a couple Memphis players if the Clippers’ theatrics and flopping bothered them. Nobody would go near the topic. Well, Memphis coach Lionel Hollins called Chris Paul a flopper on national television, but even off the record the Memphis players would shake their heads to acknowledge it and say they didn’t want to talk about it.

But everyone else is.

The Clippers have become the poster children for flopping in the NBA. It lit up twitter Monday night. Blake Griffin gets the brunt of it because it contrasts with his physical, almost confrontational style of play. We have video of Chris Paul flopping when a referee touches him. It’s not a simplistic situation — Griffin and Paul draw a lot of contact in part because they attack the rim. They get fouled more than they get calls. But they are trying to play the gamesmanship card now of selling that contact to get calls with the kind overacting usually reserved for bad dinner theater.

And there may have been no more vocal critic of the way Griffin is handling this than Charles Barkley. He ripped Griffin on the TNT postgame show Monday and said the same thing on the Dan Patrick Show (via Sports Radio Interviews).

“(Griffin) made me so mad last night. I called him Vince Carter last night. Because Vince Carter was a great player — we used to joke he got shot like three times a game. I called him that on the show last night, I said ‘Blake Griffin has turned into a new Vince Carter.’ … He gets shot three or four times a game and just goes down. He better stop that flopping. He gotta stop that, because you can tell all these players are taking cheap shots because he’s getting to be annoying with all the flopping.”

Will he lose the respect of players for flopping?

“No they just gonna enjoy hitting you more. Because what the mentality becomes then is, ‘OK, if you’re gonna flop I’m gonna knock the hell out of you.’ That’s actually the way it goes. They won’t lose respect because he’s a terrific player.”

What the Clippers are doing is not new — even players with a tough reputation like Kobe Bryant sell calls. And that’s part of it — when your team does it, they are just trying to sell the call because the referees don’t respect them; when the other team does it, they are flopping and why doesn’t the referee call that?

What I fear is the second round when the Clippers (assuming they can close out the Grizzlies) take on the Spurs, who have the king of all floppers in Manu Ginobili. It’s going to look at times like there are snipers all over the arena picking guys off. Yea! NBA Basketball, it’s fantastic!

He told plenty of people – including the Pacers – he planned to leave for the Lakers in the summer of 2018. Even after the Thunder traded for him, George spoke of the lure of playing for his hometown team.

Of course, George also left the door open to re-signing with Oklahoma City. He proclaimed he’d be dumb to leave if the Thunder reached the conference finals or upset the Warriors.

So far, Oklahoma City (12-14) doesn’t even look like a playoff lock, let alone a team capable of knocking off Golden State or reaching the conference finals. So, cue the inevitable speculation.

Do these executives have inside information into George’s thinking, or are they just speculating based on already-available information? Some executives are incentivized to drum up the Lakers threat, because they want to trade for George themselves now. If these executives insist George will leave for Los Angeles regardless, they might pry him from Oklahoma City for less.

There’s also a theory George is hyping his desire to sign with the Lakers so a team would have to trade less for him. That got him to the Thunder for what looked like a meager return (but hasn’t been). It might get him to a more favorable situation before the trade deadline without hampering his next team long-term. Of course, this theory isn’t mutually exclusive with George actually signing in Los Angeles. It could just get him better options to choose from this summer.

Surely, the Thunder are trying to parse all this noise. If their season doesn’t turn around, they should explore flipping George rather than risk losing him for nothing next summer. But they should also be wary that he’ll bolt for Los Angeles at first opportunity just because rival executives predict it.